Ham-fisted Community Theater Rejects....

Puppet Master 9: Axis of Evil

     Some film franchises burn out early, some last forever. This year I chose one of the latter. I can remember when I was in my late teens discussing how horrible Full Moon Entertainment movies were with a huge fan of them. My argument was that Troma was so much better because Potato. It didn't really matter, we both had our own preferences and I respected his opinion even though I was clearly right. Puppet Master was the strongest example of how terrible they were. And I think the only reason I chose to watch this set is because I found a DVD at HellMart with all 9 movies for a mere $5. They've been mostly terrible and I can't say I've enjoyed the ride, but it does satisfy my curiosity. There are 2 more that I won't be watching this year, but I'm now compelled to seek them out. But for tonight...

     Oh Jebus H. Chrizatz, here we go back in time AGAIN, and naturally the first 10 minutes of the movie is ripped from the very first movie almost frame by frame. They actually do a decent job of threading the films together, but still...I've seen them do that waaay to much in this series. Thankfully the rest of the film is fresh. But even a turd is fresh at one point in time and this truly is a steaming pile of freshness. It takes place during WW2, and you will quickly tire of the lame and inaccurate references towards the war effort.

     It turns out that Nazi Germany wants the puppets but are also conspiring with some dippy Japanese with a terribly phony accent. Something about blowing up a room in a factory. It's a really weak plot and has little to do with puppets. A young man's mother and brother are killed and his girl is kidnapped in order to ransom her for the puppets. The puppets jump in, including a new/old ninja puppet, and clean house. A note about those puppets: The were all different. And by that I mean they were new models. I'm not sure what happened to the old props, but these were all new and really cheap looking. And the end? What the hell is with the abrupt endings? This series is now infamous for it! At least half of them had some small epilogues. Clearly, that wasn't in the budget.

     But the most distracting thing about this film? The acting. It's one of the absolute worst I've ever seen. Every actor in this film should be ashamed of what they did. They should have joined a missionary and repented for their sins. In fact, since I've never seen nor heard of any of these 'actors', maybe they did! I have 1200+ movies under my belt and within that list is a strong vein of low budget features from all eras. But few in there are comparable to this travesty. And lets be honest, it's well known that my expectations were pretty low, but this thing went subterranean on me right from the start!

And that's that. It's over. My self induced hell is over. NO MORE FUCKING PUPPETS!!!

Saturday: Some old school format..